Vir
by aadarshinah
Summary: It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart. #37 in the Ancient!John 'verse.
1. Pars Una

_Vir_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

**15 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Consciousness comes slowly, in jerking fits and starts that gain him one foot of traction and cost him two more, but it does come. It brings pain in its wake, the sharpest edges dulled by exhaustion and analgesics, but still almost enough to push him back over the edge into oblivion. He struggles through it, clawing his way towards consciousness the way others might scale a cliff or tear down a fortress wall, and eventually wakes.

Opening his eyes is a herculean task. Iohannes cannot remember the last time his eyelids had so much weight. They are barely two millimetres of flesh and blood and nerves. They should not be like tungsten curtains across his eyes. They should not need this much effort to lift, but he manages it, if only barely, and through the sliver of light make out a blur of cornflower and turquoise and southern skies, mixed through with streaks of ruby and gold.

_The hospital tower_, he thinks, recognizing the mosaics Carson had so carefully installed before they'd opened the Imperial Heathcare Centre. _I'm in the intensive care wing of the hospital tower. Why?_

"What happened?" he asks, the words little more than a thin, weak rasp that can barely find their way to his own ears, let alone anyone else's. So it's a surprise when he get's a reply so sharp and cutting that he can all but feel the barbs digging into his skin-

"You mean _after_ you went into cardiac arrest on the Conference Room floor?"

"Yes," Iohannes breathes around a shaky, dry cough that makes his lungs burn. "That's probably a good place to start."

Fingers push a chip of ice between his lips before, still cold and wet, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead. "You went into cardiac arrest on the Conference Room floor. Your heart wasn't getting enough oxygen – which, I might add, is entirely _your_ fault. If you were going to Descend, you could at least have taken the time to put yourself together properly. You're mortal now. That means you _die_ if your lungs have more holes in them than a Marine brigade's socks."

Iohannes manages the slightest of smiles. "I missed you too, buddy."

Through the slits of his eyes, he catches the look of fond exasperation Rodney gives him. "They had to operate on you more times than I can count. They had to sew up the holes in your lungs and take out part of one of the lobes, not to mention get your heart beating again. _That,_ at least, is working correctly, but the rest of you… Your bones are more brittle than they were before. You managed to break both your fibulas and one of your tibias when you hit the floor; you've got five titanium pins in your legs now. Be glad Pegasus isn't as fond of metal detectors as Terran airports. Three of your ribs are fractured and one of them so shattered that Doctor Biro's not even sure she got out all the pieces out. More of your organs have been stitched back together than I would care to name… And, of course, you've been in here so long I wouldn't be surprised if you've got a terminal case of bed sores, which is no more than you deserve for doing this to us."

Iohannes feels the corners of his mouth twitch upward. Things can't be all that bad if Rodney's taking the time to insult him between explanations. "How long?"

"How long have you been in this hospital bed or how long were you missing, presumed _dead_ you ungrateful, heart attack inducing _moron_?"

"Either. Both."

"You turned to dust on the twenty-ninth of June – thank you for that nightmare, by the way. As for how long you've been unconscious, you came back a week ago – and I mean a week Earth-time; we're still trying to figure out what to do about the local calendar. It's a little… different than what we were used to."

"I'm sorry."

"Well, I suppose it was too much to hope that you'd keep other peoples' sleep cycles in mind in the midst of your delusions. At least it's a habitable planet – though did you know there's giant species of venomous snakes on the southern islands? A whole genus of them, actually. The biologists have already declared eighty percent of what passes for the mainland as a out-of-bounds."

"I'm sorry for that too."

"I sincerely doubt you _meant_ to put us on a planet with man-sized killer snakes."

"Not for the snakes."

Rodney huffs and feeds him another ice chip as if to avoid an immediate answer. "I'm still angry at you about that, you know."

"But you're here."

"Yes, well," Rodney stammers, staring down at the cup of ice he holds rather than meet Iohannes' gaze, "you may be an idiot, but you're _my_ idiot, so…"

"I love you," he tells him.

He can feel Rodney's hand on his face as unconsciousness drags him back under, his words, "I know," following him into his dreams.

* * *

Even so, his dreams are not dreams. They're not even nightmares. They're memories he cannot shake, visions he should never have seen; sights he should never have witnessed.

But the mind is a resilient thing, especially the Alteran mind. It can bury even the most horrific memories so deep that even it can become blind to the secrets it hides - particularly when doing so is the only way to maintain a grasp, however slight, on sanity.

But nothing can stay hidden forever.

* * *

**16 July, 2007**

"The office suites you."

Evan looks up, surprised but not startled to find Icarus darkening his office door. "I heard you'd escaped from the ICU. What are you doing here?"

"Can't an old man visit his son at work every now and then?"

The look on Evan's face must say it all, because Icarus' own falls before he says-

"Yeah, I've not exactly been a shining example of parenthood lately, have I? I've yet to con you into helping me build weapons of mass destruction, so I suppose I've still got one up on Father, but definitely not Parent of the Year material." He pauses, breathing heavily for long moment before continuing somewhat musingly, "You remind me so much of your grandfather."

"I remind you of Janus?"

"No, not Father," he chuckles as he staggers gracelessly into the room, "though you have the look about you. I mean my half-brother, your five hundred thirtieth great-grandfather, Davidus Constantin. You remind me of him."

"It's my understanding that he was born after you went into stasis."

By this point, Icarus has made it over to the overdesigned monstrosity that the Ancients called a couch. He collapses on it, his skin ashen even from a distance and coated with enough sweat to make his hair cling, seemingly unnoticed, to his face. This is a man who has just spent a week in ICU, who has rebuilt his body from moonbeams and fairy dust and half-remembered biology lessons and it shows. Evan can barely imagine how he got out of bed in as much pain as he must be in, let alone made it all the way across the city to this office.

Still, Icarus shrugs, answering nothing.

Eventually he says, "I wasn't lying, y'know. The office does suit you."

"You're just saying that because it gets me to do all your paperwork."

"_Your_ paperwork now. You're _imperator_, which means the bureaucracy is yours to deal with – which may be the one good thing to come out of all of this."

This is enough to startle Evan way from his paperwork – a checklist, really, of things that Gate teams are and are not allowed to trade for supplies from off-world, which has only been slightly modified from the earliest days of the First Expedition – and to his feet. "Look, we thought you were dead. I did what I had to do. But like it or not, the stability of this Confederation depends on you – on you being their living god."

"Yes, and _that _worked out so well for all us, " Icarus snaps, his voice sharper and more forceful than should be possible from someone in his condition. "Look," he continues, all strength having left his voice but none of the conviction, "I'm not a good person. We all saw what happened when I was given power: It destroyed me. It nearly destroyed everything I've ever cared about. If the Asurans hadn't attacked, I've no doubt things would not have worked out as bloodless as they did.

"But you… that other Davidus was a good man, a kind man. Genes like his, he could have conquered his known world if he wanted, but instead he brought a hundred years of peace to his region and laid the foundations for what would become the basis for most Terran legal code, though Justinianus and Tribonianus would get all the credit for it."

"And this is the man I remind you of?"

"A better man than I," Icarus agrees readily.

Evan finds himself at a loss. He's-

-standing behind his desk – the one that had until had until last month been Icarus', all glass and sleek lines, designed to impress and intimidate – his fingertips gripping and smudging the edge. His high-backed chair skid into the shelves behind when he stood, tipping over some of books and rattling one or two of the knickknacks left over from Doctor Weir's tenure that had found their way into this new office.

-three million light years from the planet he was born on. The alien who adopted him has recently returned from the dead and is now curled up on his couch, shivering despite the tropical breeze floating through the window and the borrowed robe wrapped tightly about him. Until he heard him alter McKay's memories, he would have died for the man; he'd already given up so much for him, giving up his life seemed the natural next step. But since then he's heard Icarus name himself a god and threaten everything they both hold dear. Evan doesn't know if he'll ever be able trust Icarus ever again.

-lost his past. He's loosing his future too. Radek has become distant since their arrival on this planet. Between Rodney's all-consuming grief and their recent relocation, his own _amator_ had a ready excuse for why they can't spare more than five minutes alone together. Evan had been willing to accept this at first – work always will come before everything else with them – but now that things have started to die down, Radek has continued to pull away. It's as if seeing all the harm Rodney and Icarus are capable of causing each other has only encouraged Radek's absurd idea that they shouldn't let themselves become to close to each other. In fact, Evan's almost certain that Radek is going to put an end to any closeness before much longer.

-at a loss, and the only friend he has left – the only person in the universe with any hope of understanding what he's been through – is the one responsible for it all. He wants to believe that Icarus is himself again, but some part of him can't help but feel that this is all a setup. Sheppard may be mortal once more but that doesn't mean he's stopped being dangerous. Indeed, he remains the single most dangerous being in the universe. He's always been smarter than he appears and clearly remembers some things from his time as an Ascended being.

Icarus could be playing them. He could be setting himself up to Ascend again, this time with a stronger powerbase and fully-fledged delusions of godhood. He _had_ said something about _kick-starting the universe_ before he'd passed out, which is clearly something no sane person would ever do.

But maybe, just maybe, Icarus really has seen the error in his ways and, if he's taking responsibility for his crimes, who is Evan to deny him his chance at redemption simply because he fears he could be wrong?

Sheppard's never been a man to make the same mistake twice.

In the end, Evan does the only thing he _can _do, which is open one of the bottom shelves and pull out a blanket pre-emptively squirrelled away from occasions like these, but Icarus is already fast asleep.

Evan throws the blanket over him and lets him stay.

* * *

But his sleep is not easy. There's no violent thrashing, no shouted words in long dead languages, but only an idiot could look at him and not tell that _something_'s wrong.

He steps out of the office to quietly call Doctor Beckett and let him know where his errant patient is – and where he'll probably require medical attention in the near future, but in the thirty seconds he's gone, Icarus disappears, the crumpled blanket at the foot of the couch the only sign he'd been.

* * *

That night, his own nightmares start.


	2. Pars Dua

_Vir_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

**{?} – {?}**

In the beginning, it doesn't feel like a nightmare. It doesn't even feel like a real dream. All he knows is one moment he's laying in bed, trying not to fall asleep after a night of the best sex he's ever had because it felt too much like goodbye and he doesn't want this to be the end, and the next he's standing in an underground bunker that reminds him far too much of the SGC.

It's a bit of a jarring transition, not winning his brain any cinematography awards, and at first he thinks it's just his mind's way of coping with all the stress he's been under. After all, the Third Expedition is coming to Atlantis in two days and there's still so much for him to do, so many personnel files for him to read. Add to that the fact that, between the abandonment and the betrayals, the SGC has become the monster under his bed, and, well, nightmare about what the Air Force will do to him if he ever sets foot on Earth is just what he needs to make this day even better.

(Believe it or not, there was a time in the not so distant past when he slept nightmare-free, but that was another Expedition ago.)

Evan starts to realize things aren't all as they seem the moment he realizes it's _not_ the SGC he's standing in or even a reasonable dream-facsimile of it. Don't get him wrong, it's definitely a nuclear fallout bunker and there's probably a military presence around somewhere, but the tunnels walls are angled more sharply than they are at the SGC and the coloured lines running the length of the halls and the bare pipes overhead have markings in a language he doesn't immediately recognize.

He'd write it all off as dream gibberish, the flotsam and jetsam of a busy mind, except it doesn't _feel_ like a dream. Hell, it feels more real than some days he's had of late, but that doesn't mean he wants to stick around.

Just because he's lucid, though, doesn't mean he has any more control over his actions than he would if this were a normal dream. He tries to search for the exits and instead finds himself walking deeper into the underground warren of tunnels and unmarked doors, and eventually gives up looking for an escape route and decides just to play along. It's only a dream after all. No matter how strange it may seem, it's only a dream. So he returns the salutes of the few people he sees in the halls – all of them military, wearing what could possibly have passed for a World War Two-era service coat and slacks if they hadn't been ultramarine instead of the usual khaki – and swallows down the panic building within him.

All his walking leads to a door.

On the other side of the door is an office hardly bigger than a broom cupboard with a single desk, a single chair, and a desk lamp illuminating a computer terminal that looks like it was pulled straight out of _2001_. Evan has no idea why his dream has brought him here, but his dream-self is filled with purpose. He flips switches and turns dials with practiced ease, so focused on his work that he manages to miss the heavy vault door open and close behind him.

"Just what do you think you're doing, Aristaeus?"

His dream-self spins around. _Icarus_, he wants to say, glad despite everything that's happened to see him. He may be terrified that his adoptive father's going to betray them again – that he's _still_ betraying them, that somewhere deep inside him, Icarus still thinks himself a god and will move whole worlds to become one again, - but Icarus always knows what to do. He fixes things. He moves heaven and earth to bring everyone home. Despite everything that's happened, Evan still wants to believe that's true.

But that's not what he says.

Instead, in a voice he doesn't immediately recognize as his own, he says, "I have my orders, sir."

"The only person you should be taking orders from, _tribunus_, is me."

"This comes down directly from the Council. They know you have lost your stomach for the realities of war, so they gave the job to someone they could trust to get it done: me."

"_The realities of war_," Icarus repeats, the very essence of disbelief dripping from his words. "Aristaeus, they're _hydrogen bombs_. They're not designed for the quick and clean removal of some military target; the only thing they're good for is wanton destruction of anything and everything that lies in their paths. Do you have any idea how many city blocks they will flatten? How many children and civilians they will kill instantly?"

"You know what they did to Cantuaria. You _saw_ what they did to Vigornia:

"They dragged old men from their homes and shot them in the streets! They ripped infants from their mothers' breasts and threw them into the Salopien Sea! And after they finished raping anyone left alive in the city, they gathered everyone they did not want to drag back in chains inside the cathedral of Iovis Torens, strapped bombs on the youngest of them, and blew the place sky high! The crater was still smoking when our transport landed!

"Do you remember what you said to me that day, sir? _They must pay for this_. That is all I am trying to do: make sure they pay for what they have done."

"We've done no better," Icarus says quietly.

His dream-self turns away angrily, gripping the desk tightly for one breath, then two, until he can type in the last code needed to arm the warheads with steady hands. "Orders are orders, sir."

"Think about what you're doing, Aristaeus. It's called _mutually assured destruction_ for a reason. You fire these missiles at Triverium and Dubris and they'll have their own heading to Cantuaria and Vigornia and Llundain before the bombs have even fallen. You do this, and you'll turn Loegria into a radioactive wasteland from which it will never recover. You'll kill eight billion people and doom the survivors to wandering the stars for the rest of eternity. We'll never rest. We'll never stop. We'll never forgive ourselves. We'll spend the rest of history trying to make up for what you're about to do."

Icarus is desperate, his voice just a shade shy of pleading – a tone Evan has never heard him use, not even with Rodney when he was trying to convince him of his innocence not so long ago. But Evan's dream-self – Aristaeus – doesn't care. He simply presses the return key, the last step needed to deploy the six missiles this launch control centre houses, and seals them all to their fate.

It takes Icarus a second to realize what's happening. Indeed, no lights or sirens activate to tell the world what his dream-self has just done, but the look of utter devastation that crosses his face is telling enough. He throws a hand into the air, ruin twisting into resolve as he attempts something Evan cannot see but causes the telemetry readings to go crazy – the missiles are turning, speeding up, hurling themselves rapidly into space where their effects will be severely negated.

The sensors pick up something else too: the enemy, whoever they may be, has already begun launching their own missiles in retaliation. They too start to turn, but there are too many, coming from all corners of the globe, and Icarus cannot hold it.

He loses control.

The missiles come hurtling back to earth, detonating where they land.

And that's when the real nightmare begins.

* * *

**17 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Point of fact: Evan has never been religious. His dog tags, his original set, say _CATHOLIC_, because his father came from a long line of lapsed Roman Catholics and it was easier to put down a religion – any religion – than none at the time. After the stigma had faded, he'd never bothered to update them. It just hadn't mattered, even when he was filling out forms naming his half-sister Robin his next of kin and ticking all the little boxes on the forms that asked what kind of funeral he wanted if he a) died in service of the SGC and b) his body could be returned to his family c) without needing to be cremated to protect state secrets.

After he'd been read-in on he existence of alien beings that called themselves gods (lowercase _g_) and been adopted by a being who called himself God (uppercase _g_), Evan had continued to feel no particular religious inclination, either for or against. The goa'uld are only gods in the _any sufficiently advanced technology _sense. Even The Ascended Ancients, to include both Icarus and the Ori, are only _sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligences _and their powers, while undeniable, had still fallen short of actual divinity.

If pressed, Evan would have defined _actual divinity_ as _utter indifference to any and all of the universe's inhabitants_.

His logic is this:

God, by more conventional definitions, is conceived to be omniscient, omnipotent, and eternal. As such, there is nothing that humans (being rather ignorant, incapable, and transient in comparison) could ever do that might interest said God.

It is not until he wakes up, drenched in sweat and biting back a scream, that it occurs to Evan that the opposite of a disinterested God is an attentive Devil, and that no being had ever been as interested in humanity as Icarus was before his Fall.

* * *

Second fact: Evan rarely, if ever, remembers his dreams. And he's certainly never woken up, drenched in sweat and biting back a scream, from one either. That this one pulls out all the stops – from rapid pulse to heavy breaths to thrashing about the bed like a man possessed – is only a side bonus.

* * *

Lastly: The bunks aboard _Aurora_ are not designed for tossing _or_ turning, especially when more than one person occupies them.

* * *

He hits the floor hard.

Rory winces audibly – a riot of sour notes in the middle of an achingly beautiful coronach for lost Lantea, lost Loegria, and all the other homeworlds that are homes no more – and trails a gentle melody over the edges of his mind, as if to soothe away all his pain. As young as she can seem, her maternal streak has grown a mile wide between everything that's happened of late. It makes her seem older. Already he misses the child she once was.

Sometimes he feels like the universe is changing around him and he's the only one standing still. Rory grows up. Icarus betrays them. Radek looks for ways to leave him.

/Are you hurt?/ she asks, her words a smooth whisper of silk and sitar.

Evan doesn't answer for a long while. Part of it is because he cannot remember how to make his voice work – his throat feels red, raw, useless; destroyed by silent screaming as the fires in his dreams hit, burning and consuming everything that lay in their paths. The rest is because he's having a hard time believing that he is actually awake. His dream had felt so real – real to the extent that he can still feel the radiation leaching into his skin – and reality seems so much like a dream.

/Argathelianus?/ she calls out, nudging his thoughts a little more firmly.

"I'm fine."

"That's not what I asked," Radek says uncharacteristically sharply, "though is good to know."

Evan stifles a groan. He loves Radek, he really, truly does, but sometimes talking to him is like walking blindfolded and barefoot into a minefield. Sure, there's a way through it, but even if they find it everybody comes out feeling singed at the end. "Sorry. What was it you were saying?"

"I asked if there was any ice on this ship."

"Shit." He scrambles to his feet, deciding to contribute the spots that flare before his eyes to Rory having chosen that that same moment to raise the lights to fifty percent. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"Your elbow clipped me, I'll be fine. Is there any ice?"

"I don't think so. We can check Rory's infirmary, but I don't think ice was anywhere on the Ancient's list of standard medical equipment."

His _amator_ hums. "What about you? You fell. Did you break anything?"

"Only my pride." His hand hovers over the Radek still holds to the right side of his face. "Let me see?"

"Perhaps you should, _ah_," Radek hisses as he lowers his hand. It's all Evan can do not to hiss himself, unwilling to admit but unable to deny that _he_ caused the rude red bruise that is rapidly swelling the eye closed, "invest in railing. "

"Or," he suggests mirthlessly, "a bigger bed."

"There are plenty of beds in the city."

The memory of the dream is still too close to the surface Evan to even begin to parse the meaning of his words. They could just as easily be an invitation to Radek's bed as a reminder that he is _imperator_ now, mortal, and lacking in an heir. "We should get you to the IHC," Evan says instead.

"Is not my first black eye, Evan."

"I might have broken something."

"Nothing is broken. All I need is ice and ibuprofen."

"You're not that kind of doctor, Radek."

Sighing, Radek slips past him and starts picking up the clothes that had, invariably, ended up in a pile halfway between the bed and the door. Evan's offered to let Radek keep an extra set in his quarters for occasions like these, but he won't have it. They have known each other in the most intimate ways possible, but allowing their processions to intermingle is a bridge too far. He'd rather wear yesterday's wrinkled clothing than admit that what they're in love with each other.

Evan thinks its love, anyway. Radek's never said a word either way.

"I'll get Carson to take a look. But," he adds, rather more forcefully then someone with a black eye should be able, "you stay here."

"Radek-"

"I know you've not been sleeping. The next two days before the Expedition arrives are going to be busy. Get some sleep while you can."

"Radek," _I'm not going to sleep. I'm not going to sleep ever again. I saw eight billion people die on a world I never set foot on but which felt like more of a home than Earth ever did all the same. Only two billion perished in the initial blast, but fire took care of the rest, and radiation, and the black rain. And for the unlucky few who managed to live through that hellish trifecta, well, the movies did not do the horror of nuclear winter justice. Starvation, dehydration, and disease took the rest, and I saw it all with my waking eyes. _

"Evan," he counters, the corners of his lips twitching into a smile.

"Please." _I held the blackened and charred hands of strangers as they died. I saw children too weak to cry as they lay in the arms of the mothers I had killed. I watched the living eat the dead for lack of alternative. Amid the chaos and the madness and the savagery, I somehow managed to stay untouched, the sole witness to the end of a civilization. _"I love you and I did this-"

Radek's quick peck silences his protests. "I can take care of myself," he says when he pulls back, "and you need sleep."

"I know-" Evan begins, but Radek is already out the door.

He should go after him. It's the right thing to do – the thing he _wants_ to do – but Radek doesn't want his company and showing up at the infirmary will only serve to irritate him and hasten the ending that has been threatening ever since Evan gave the first indication their relationship means something to him.

But Evan has never known when to quit, when to cut his losses. Drawing things out will only extend the pain of the breakup over weeks, until his heart is worn raw and damaged beyond all repair.

He doesn't know how he's supposed to do this – any of this. He loves Atlantis and Radek and Rory. He loves this galaxy and his job and the people he works with. But he doesn't know how he can do what needs to be done and keep everyone he loves at the same time.

/Argathelianus?/ Rory asks tentatively after he's sat on the edge of the bed for some indeterminable eternity, unable and unwilling to do anything beyond simmer in his own folly. He needs to get up. He needs to do something. He needs to start acting like an adult with responsibilities and not… Not whatever it is he is now.

"Yeah, Rory?"

/We know you are busy, but…/

"But what?" Evan asks tiredly.

/Will you read to us, like you used to?/

It's not the question he was expecting. His ascent falls from his lips before he even thinks to look at the time. "I don't think I have anything laying around you've not heard before, though."

/_Mater_ has thousands of Terran books in her databases./

"Of course she does," he says, standing abruptly. It takes him a moment to find a tablet with most of its charge, but find one he does before returning to the bed. "Pick one and download it to-" The tablet dings as the download finishes. "Alright then. Let's see what we're reading today:

"_Sputnik Sweethearts_ by Haruki Murakami. Chapter One. '_In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains – flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits…_'"


	3. Pars Tria

_Vir_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

**19 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Looking back, Evan will never quite understand how he makes it through the six weeks on either side of Icarus' delinquent apotheosis and precipitous Fall. Icarus had done the impossible in moulding a Confederation from such a disparate galaxy, but what he had held built with charisma and charm, Evan barely manages to hold together through sleep deprivation and sheer force of will.

Bolstered by his newfound decision never to sleep again, he ploughs through three Loegrian days without rest, completing paperwork, reading backlogged files, and even contributing three hours to the effort to track down whatever hole Icarus had crawled into following his flight from Evan's office some days previous. Atlantis proves captiously stubborn regarding the last, refusing to give up her longest serving _pastor_ but willing to reassure the remainder that Icarus is both alive and in relative good health. Its worrisome in the extreme, but without the city's help they have no hope of finding Icarus if he doesn't want to be found, and so they all have to resign themselves to the state of affairs, such as it is.

Still, there is only so long that the human body can go without sleep, and by the time the Third Expedition is set to arrive, Evan is tired, irritable, and in no state to deal with the politicking required to hold a civil conversation with anyone from Terra these days. Even so, he is the least of all possible evils, which is why he's the one leaning against the balcony of the otherwise empty Gate Room, waiting for the SGC to dial in, rather than anyone else.

He glances at his watch, set to Terran time until they can figure out what to do about Nova Loegria's twenty-one hour days. He's still got ten minutes before they're supposed to dial in, but Evan's so tired, it might as well be an eternity. As much as he doesn't want to sleep ever again, he's rapidly reaching the point where soon he'll have no choice.

Maybe he just needs to rest his eyes. He's bound to catch his second wind soon…

* * *

**{?} – {?}**

The rain falls steadily in long, straight streaks, an unwavering curtain of wet and grey that makes examination of his surroundings impossible. The earth is equally wet and grey, anything noteworthy having been stamped out of it long ago by a hundred thousand feet. Those same feet have churned the mud to a thin, even consistency that can slip through even the sturdiest of boots in a downpour like this.

The floorboards creak under his feet as Evan hurries his way to the open door, practically groaning when he stomps his feet against the already sodden mat. His boots – the sturdiest of makes, pebbled-leather running calf-high and the soles hobnailed by the best manufacturer on the continent – squeak and squelch as he makes his way further into the building. He does his best to ignore the sound, walking quickly to his destination: a door, no more interesting than any of the others on the hall.

_This is a dream_, Evan thinks. _I'm asleep in the Control Room. It will be a miracle if I don't fall off the balcony._

The knowledge that this is only a dream doesn't help Evan much. Indeed, if anything, this one feels even more real than the one that came before. Evan can feel the chill in the air this time, smell the must of damp wool; trace the path of raindrops down his neck and under his collar. He thinks, if he allowed himself, he could forget himself entirely – forget that this is only a dream and slip into his dream-self's skin without ever remembering this it isn't real.

This time, he knocks on the door.

"Come in," says the voice on the other side.

Evan opens it and steps through. Inside, behind a great wooden desk, surrounded by sepia-toned maps and violent red banners, is Icarus, wearing the grey-green uniform of the _Schutzstaffel_.

* * *

**19 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Evan jerks awake violently, nearly tumbling over the railing as the Gate activates. He's hardly managed to catch his breath before the SGC comes over the comm, requesting permission to send the Third Expedition through.

He grants it, heart pounding in his chest, and goes down the stairs to greet them.

* * *

"That," Rodney says definitively, fixing the rounded tip of his spoon at him, "is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"I doubt that," Radek snorts, poking at his own breakfast rather less eagerly. "Weren't you telling me just yesterday about Doctor Durand's solution to our twenty-one hour day problem?"

Rodney makes a noise of both consideration and contempt. "The universe is full of idiots, all of them bent and determined on yapping to me about their idiocy. You especially."

"All I said was, _I do not know_. That is hardly idiocy."

"For the last three days," he says, piling steamed Tava beans onto his _msemen_-style pancakes as Radek watches, "every time I've asked you about Evan, your answer has been _you don't know_, which can only mean you're avoiding him. Avoiding the person you're in love with is where the idiocy comes in."

"I'm not -" he begins, loudly and abruptly, before cutting himself off. He glances quickly down the table, but the only other occupant in the Émigré's wardroom is Doctor Che, who is too busy blinking tiredly into her coffee cup to pay attention to what's going on at the other end of the table, if she even recognizes there's anyone else in the room at all. "I'm not," Radek continues in more sombre tones, "in love with Evan."

This earns him an amused snort this time. "Keep telling yourself that."

Undeterred, "We have an understanding, that's all."

"Is _that_ what the kids are calling it these days?"

"Is not like that," he insists.

Radek has spent years watching Rodney's relationship with the Colonel evolve, having guessed where it would take them long before either admitted to their own feelings. Even at the beginning, there had something grand and fated about it – how could there not be, with a pair like them, Sheppard the last living Ancient and Rodney the scientific successor of Gauss and Euler? Impossible, the both of them, and yet-

They live like they're the only people alive, circling about each other in a tight orbit of furious living and vicious certainty that will one day be the death of them all. It's _already_ killed them, though luck alone had kept it from taking. It's dangerous and destructive and not everyone can live like that, dragged though life on waves of passion only to drown the moment it all catches up with them. Most people need stability, safety, certainty. Love... Love is dangerous.

Love only gets people hurt.

"Our lives are not safe," he continues. "We could die, any of us, at any time. Better not to make promises that we cannot keep than…" _then carry on like you do whenever one of us inevitably dies, _Radek does not say, though Rodney can follow his argument, however unspoken, easily enough.

"Like I said: the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"Since when are you an expert?"

"I'll have you know-" he begins, only to cut himself off abruptly with a, "John!"

Radek turns. To his amazement, it _is_ the Colonel. He's about ten pounds lighter than when he saw him last, his face gaunt and skin pale where it is not deeply shadowed. His blood red robes, stolen from Doctor Beckett's office, only intensifies his look of malaise, as does the cane he leans heavily upon as he makes for their end of the table.

"Hey guys," he says, clapping a hand on Radek's shoulder to balance himself as he collapses into the chair on his right. "I'm starving. Pass me a plate, will you?"

"_I'm starving_, he says," Rodney huffs, working himself into a state of mild dudgeon but pushing his own half-finished plate in his husband's direction. "Three days you've been missing this time. I'm half tempted to put a bell on you or chip you or something."

"Kinky," is the Colonel's only answer to this, rolling up the remains of Rodney's pancakes and Tava beans into a burrito. "Hand me the, well, hand me everything."

"I'm sorry, are we just going to ignore the fact that you thought it would be a good idea to go traipsing around the abandoned areas of the city with _two _broken legs, _three_ fractured ribs, and a _quarter_ of your lungs left on the operating room floor?"

"I fixed the ribs," he says before taking a tentative bite of his breakfast, after which he makes a noise Radek is, frankly, embarrassed to hear. If he weren't so curious, he'd find a way to excuse himself before this gets vulgar. "_Alimenta_," the Colonel continues reverently. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since I had actual _food_?"

"A year or so."

"Try almost twenty seven billion. It'd forgotten thins could _taste_."

"John," Rodney says, waning in patience, "the universe isn't that old."

Polishing off Rodney's breakfast, Sheppard holds up two fingers, swallows with apparent difficulty, and reaches for the platter of _msemen_-pancakes. "I went through it twice," he informs them obliquely, the majority of his attention on his meal rather than his dining companions. "Pass me the butter, will you?"

Radek passes the butter. The Colonel, he notes, doesn't bother with the pretence of a plate this time, taking the full platter for is own.

"How?"

"The Higher Planes collapsed when I killed the others. Or maybe the others died when I collapsed the Higher Planes. I'm not all too clear on that part," he says matter-of-factly, slathering butter on his pancakes. "I wasn't thinking all that clearly and it was a long time ago now. Is that jam?" The Colonel reaches across the table for what is indeed a jar of preserves, "Either way, it collapsed, which caused history to rewrite itself so that the extra dimensions are all curled up tight instead of vaguely intersecting with this dimension in some hazily defined four-dimensional space."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"No, it doesn't, does it? I've been trying to straighten it all out in my head, but..." he gestures indistinctly with his fork, to no apparent end other than to put droplets of melted butter on the table. "I watched the universe burn and knew I was the cause. It is all my fault. Everything. All the suffering, all the wars, all the death, it is my fault. I am the one responsible for it all, not the Wraith or the _Haeretici_ or the others: me."

"John-"

The Colonel does not appear to hear. In truth, he doesn't seem to hear anything. His fork falls uselessly from his hand, making a great clatter that has even the under-caffeinated Doctor Che turn their way, but Sheppard doesn't notice. His senses are in another time, another place, and while his eyes don't fade to the white of his Ascension days, they are unfocused as they stare at something that only he can see. "Time ran through my fingers. I could see all the futures my choice could make. A billions billion possible universes filled with knowledge beyond understanding, life beyond wonder, and suffering beyond measure. A glance was enough to find the one that suffered least – the best of all possible worlds – and I chose it and made it so, not daring to interfere for fear I would be the ruin of it all…

"But I couldn't. It was still too much. I tried to stop what I could, but I couldn't. Bombs keep falling. Cities keep burning. People keep dying… I think I went mad for a while, trying to stop it…" He blinks suddenly, as if returning to his senses, and pushes his plate away. "I'm not hungry anymore."


	4. Pars Quattor

_Vir_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

**19 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Atlantis, Radek thinks occasionally, would more rightly have been named The Lonely City. Regardless of the infusion of almost five hundred Terran scientists, Marines, and administrators, the city remains near empty. Her entire population could be housed in one of the medium-sized towers and still have room for their offices and equipment. With space left over.

Doctor Weir had asked once, in the earliest weeks of the First Expedition, how many people Atlantis could hold. He remembers Colonel Sheppard answering – indeed, he remembers being surprised the Ancient had answered at all, for in those days he'd rarely spoken to anyone save Rodney about the past he'd so recently lost – that he was unsure. The city hadn't boasted a full population since the start of what he called _The Silver Age_ some seventeen million years previous, but she mostly likely could room and board a million people, had Sheppard's ancestors been so inclined.

Personally, Radek thinks Atlantis was never even half that crowded. The Ancients had been a dying race for most of their history. Between war and disease, Ascension and catastrophe, their population had never been able to grow. The only beings Atlantis has ever had many of are ghosts. They linger around ever corner, darken every door. Not actual ghosts, of course, but there are places in Atlantis that seem tainted by lingering psychic scars that science cannot explain. Maybe the walls remember what no one left alive can.

It's a big, wide universe out there. He's seen stranger things.

Even with the population boost, Atlantis feels empty, or at least the parts that Radek, in his own way, haunts. Evan has restricted the Expedition to the East Pier until further arrangements can be made, and Radek spends most of his time on the Southwest, with the empty ships that had once brought doom to Asuras.

He finishes testing the final connection before sliding out from under the master environmental control console. _Victoria_ and _Vindicta_ had survived their flight from the besieged city, but not without significant damage, mostly to their electrical systems. Repairing them isn't urgent, not like some of the repairs to Atlantis, but he's always liked to have an escape route on hand if at all possible. Besides, Rodney has those under control. If Radek tried to help, he'd only be sent to work on the water filtration systems.

Again.

"_Dobře_," he tells _Victoria_, "_uvidíme jestli máme tuto práci._" He enters a few commands onto the console and then steps back, keeping one eye on the master ending wrong systems display that takes up most of the side wall and the other on the wires beneath the console itself. No alarms, however, are triggered and none of the wires melt it spark from overloaded circuits.

Radek smiles and pats the console lightly. These ships may not be self aware, as Atlantis and _Aurora_ are, but that doesn't matter. He's always talked to his tech – computers and life signs detectors, puddle jumpers and car engines, it's never mattered. He holds conversations with them all. He's just never entertained the idea they might be talking back to him.

"_Myslím, že to je. Pokud nemáte něco pro mě opravit?_" He waits a moment. When nothing in his line of sight obligingly breaks down, he continues, "_Pak je na čase, volal jsem ji v noci. Slunce bude až na pár hodin tak jako tak._"He should probably sleep.

Sleep.

As much as he should sleep and let his body adjust to this wretched twenty-one hour day they have to contend with on their new homeworld, Radek can't face heading back to his own quarters. They're not that far – just in the other side of the hanger, actually, in the part of the complex where all the old offices and ready rooms for the officers and crew of the _Tethys_-class warships used to be, in the days when _Tethys_-class warships still existed – but it has been four days now since he's seen Evan. And as patient and understanding and generous as Evan may be, four days is long enough that he'll start looking for him. And Radek doesn't want to be found, not yet. He needs time to get his head straight:

He doesn't love Evan.

He can't love Evan.

He can't loose Evan.

Which is what will happen if he lets himself love him – lose him, that is. Loss is what love is. And maybe, just maybe, if they can keep going like this, they can have the best of both worlds without suffering the consequences when it is brought to an end, as it inevitably will be.

But if that's the case, why does it hurt so much?

Radek ignores the pain. It's better this way. Getting too close will only hurt them in the long run. A little pain now is worth the price if it keeps them from falling apart later, when it really matters. To that end, he doesn't return to his quarters, but goes up to Deck 2 instead. There are a couple of cabins there that he could spend the night in. Some might call it hiding, but Radek calls it self-preservation.

* * *

**{?} – {?}**

Radek has barely closed his eyes when he finds himself being shaken awake.

"Wake up," says a voice – adult, male, with a Polish inflection and a distinctly harassed tone. He's known his share of Poles in his time, but there aren't any in Atlantis, unless the Third Expedition brought one with them, and even if they did, he doesn't know why this one would have been sent to wake him. Even if anyone knew where to look for him, there are comms for this sort of thing. "Doctor Bosak, you must wake up. The Horváth twins are dead."

His eyes snap open, not entirely of his own accord. The world around him is sharp and crisp, too real to be the creations of a tired mind but too different from where he'd gone to sleep to be anything other than a dream.

The Polish man is leaning over him, a bony hand still on his shoulder. The light in the room he finds himself in is dim, provided only by a single, flickering candle, but it is enough to make out a few of the speaker's features. His face is gaunt in the manner of someone who has lost too much weight in too short a time and his close-cropped hair does his sharp features no favours. Behind him, shadows and murmurs suggest other sleepers in the barracks.

"You must hurry. He wants the autopsies done before the morning inspection. It's already half-past three already."

_You have the wrong person_, he tries to say, but what comes out of his mouth is, "So soon?"

"He wishes to repeat the experiment on the Džugi girls this afternoon."

Radek is on his feet before he can think of the proper response, following the Pole out the door and down a labyrinth of grey wood hallways without another word. Try as he might, he has no control over his actions. If it is a dream, than it is the strangest dream he has ever had, and he has had some strange ones in his time.

It's only when his dream-self removes his jacket in favour of a physician's lab coat that he sees the triangles stitched onto it's breast pocket: one red, inverted, superimposed over one of yellow.

His dreams have taken him to the Auschwitz concentration camp at the height of the Second World War.

* * *

He falls into the dream like no time has passed, closing his eyes to find himself standing in front of a great wooden desk, the kind he's ever only seen in Victorian-era movies, flanked by blood red banners bearing the unmistakable right-facing swastika of the Nazi Party. A lone figure stands behind it, gripping the edge of the desk until his hands have turned as white as the bones beneath them. His uniform (the unmistakable grey-green of the SS, or _Schutzstaffel_) is sharply pressed; a child daring enough could cut his fingers on the front pleats. The various buttons and inginia are highly polished. Evan would bet good money that his boots, despite the weather, are the same. And yet-

-and yet his collar is open, revealing the sweat-drenched shirt underneath. His hair is tousled from more than the peaked cap teetering on the near corner o the desk. His eyes are red, bloodshot, and the skin beneath bruised to the point of violence, but there's a manic light in them that makes Evan think there is more than plain and simple exhaustion at work.

His dream-self must notice, but, unlike Evan, he is more disgusted than concerned about his superior's appearance. "You wished to see me, Commandant?" he asks stiffly, his voice not his own.

The Commandant – Icarus, for there can be no mistaking his adoptive father, even in the Nazi regalia this dream has outfitted them both in – nods stiffly, his fingers impossibly tightening on the desk. "I did. We need to talk, Eduard."

"What is so important that you dragged me out of bed at this hour, in the middle of this storm, to hear it?"

"It's this war, Eduard."

"The war, sir?"

"I can't stand it," he vows, shuttering. Though he doesn't look strong enough, he pushes away from the desk violently, so much so that a more modern piece of furniture would have gone skidding across the floor.

Evan's dream-self, to his credit, barely flinches at this outburst.

Icarus continues, clearly unaware that his actions are outside the range of human normal. "Don't get me wrong, I understand _hate_. I understand _need_ and _must_ and _balance_. I understand that eighty million people have to die so that the _porta_ would be taken out of Egypt and resources expended to discover its operation, so that one day fifteen billion people across two dozen galaxies can be saved. I hate it, but I understand it. It was the choice I made: this war and hundreds like it for a future free of them."

"Sir?"

"I don't expect you to understand. You believe in this war, Eduard. You think it's _good_ and _noble_ and _right_. But you can't build paradise – or the closest thing a universe can ever get to it – from exclusion. It doesn't work that way. Ten or twenty generations ago, the people you're killing now were your brothers. The blood your spilling now may as well be your own, for all the difference it makes."

Though Evan himself can make some sense of Icarus' words, he can feel his dream-self stiffen with every syllable. His disgust culminates in the question, "Have you gone mad?" said with such Teutonic fury that Evan, though he can feel his mouth move, can hardly imagine it as coming from himself.

"Oh, yes," Icarus answers, unusually honest. "But that's not important right now."

"I disagree. Since it is obvious that you are not longer fit for duty, I must-"

"The only thing you _must_ do is stop your experiments."

A strangled, "Sir?" is his only reply.

"You're the chief doctor here, Doctor Wirths. If you order your men to stop their experiments, the other camps will follow. You're the kind of man others want to follow. In another life, you could have been a great man. I robbed you of that by choosing this universe and this war, but I'm giving you the chance now to be the person you always should have been. You're a good man, Eduard, a kind man. Stop these experiments. Save the universe that little bit of suffering."

"You _are_ mad," his dream self – Eduard Wirths – says.

"That's hardly the point," Icarus waves off the accusation, rounding his desk to stand uncomfortably close. "I'm not asking you to change the world. No one could have stopped this war – one way or another, it was always going to happen. But you can stop your experiments. Maybe these people have to die. Maybe some of them even deserve it. But your experiments are just wrong. I don't know if suffering is inevitable or if it builds character or preserves free will or whatever else the philosophers and apologists argue, but I _do_ know that what you're doing goes beyond the pall, Eduard. War or not, prisoners or not, Jew or gentile or anything in between, no one deserves what you and your lot are doing. It's pointless and malicious and cruel and you're above that Eduard, you really are."

Evan can feel his dream-self shaking with anger. "I must call the _Feldgendarmerie_."

"No, no, no," Icarus says, walking the line between sadness and insanity. "That won't do at all."

He snaps his fingers and a flood of dizziness overcomes Evan, strong enough that it's a minor miracle he manages to stay on his feet. His vision goes completely black and, when it finally clears, Icarus is back behind his desk, collar buttoned, hair straightened, hardly looking as he had moments before.

Then Evan blinks, the Commandant isn't Icarus at all, but some rough, square jawed man with close-cropped hair and a permanent scowl. And it is he who orders, "Dismissed, _Standortarzt_," as if their conversation never happened.

* * *

They play the game for another week of dreamtime, Icarus calling Evan's dream-self to the Commandant's office for a midnight talk in the Commandant's body, each more desperate than the last. By the fifth, he's fairly certain Icarus _is_ actually mad, if not in the way his dream-self thinks. Twenty-seven billion years is a long time to be alone and the universe has never been a kind place to those who care too much, as Icarus does beneath his laconic façade.

Maybe that all the Devil is: the One who cares, the One who cares so much it hurts, and that hurt destroys Himself and everyone He touches, because excess of love destroys just as easily as excess of hate, and more insidiously.

Either way, Icarus continues to try to persuade Evan's dream-self to put an end to the dreadful medical experiments he and the other doctors preform on their prisoners, but after a week even Icarus can see it's pointless. His dream-self, Eduard Wirths, wholeheartedly believes in what he's doing, and not even divine providence can chance that.

And that's when the trouble starts.


	5. Pars Quinque

_Vir_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

**20 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Iohannes can feel himself slip, slip, slipping away. He is mortal now, the atoms of his hands borne out of the heart of the star that birthed this world, twisted into strands of muscle and lines of bone and litres of blood. For the first time in twice the history of the universe, his flesh is more than light and memory. The head on his shoulders is made of carbon and calcium, the mind inside of hydrogen and oxygen and other things besides. He is finite and limited. One day he will die.

One day he shall die and his ashes shall drift out into the universe, until all that he is mixes with all that ever was, forming new stars and new planets, but for now he is finite, confined to flesh and blood and the limitations of each.

Try as he might, the knowledge he possessed as a twenty-seven billion year old Ascended being is too much for even an Alteran brain to handle. Like water in cupped hands, it proves impossible to contain, and Iohannes can almost physically feel the memories fall away.

And so he dreams.

He dreams of Auschwitz, the Fall of Tarquinus, and the Immolation of Gaheris. He dreams of the Twelfth Furling Civil War, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, and Elizabeta's pointless, senseless, untimely death. He dreams of the Sack of Vigornia, the Scourge of Hanka, and the slaughter of the Abydonians during the battle of above their homeworld. He dreams of the bombing of Loegria, the destruction of Anbiya, and the downfall of Icarus Eosphorus.

And in the worst moments – the absolute worst moments, when he knows it's impossible to forgive himself for all that he's done, when the knowledge no one ever truly walks away from _Haeresis_ weighs heavily on his mind; when he can't help but think the universe would be better off if he was no longer around to make bad situations that much worse, – he dreams of what he did to Rodney. The other memories will fade in time, but that one will haunt him forever.

But it's more than that. Iohannes can feel _himself_ falling away with each new dream. Even the shadows of a billion years of horrors, however diminished, are too much for an Alteran mind to hold. Soon, the only thing he will be able to remember is _hate_ and _torment_ and _enmity_. He suspects his friends will be forced to end his life for their own safety long before he works up the courage to take it himself.

He doesn't want to die, but he's spent twenty-seven billion years seeped in pain and death and suffering. If he ever had the ability to do something good with his life, it's long gone now. He cannot close his eyes except to see blood and ash and bone. In the pulse of his blood he can hear the drumbeats and the screaming and-

* * *

**{?} – {?}**

-the shriek of Replicator cruisers as they decelerate rapidly in the atmosphere. They are such tiny things, barely thirty-five meters long – the Terrans have thalassic battleships ten times the size, and even their 304s are double that length, – but they howl as they pierce the sky, coming to a rapid standstill from gees that would have flattened an organic being.

There are so many of them, they darken the sky, making twilight out of midday. Any moment now, blocks that make up the cruisers will separate, reforming into the spiders that will strip this world bare.

Iohannes looks away quickly. He has seen this devastation play out on a hundred thousand worlds already. He does not need to see it again.

The man beside him follows his gaze to the distant mountains. Iohannes hasn't bothered to cloak himself in a mortal form this time – wearing another's body to communicate takes energy, and he is trying to conserve all that he can to Descend, the future he once left now not even two years away – but it doesn't surprise him that the Nox can see him. Their species has always had heightened perception.

"You can stop this," he tells him.

"I cannot," the man calmly disagrees, seemingly as unbothered by the imminent demise of his race as the incorporeity of his conversation partner.

"Maybe not by yourself, but there are enough of you here to make a difference. Send a signal to the Asgard or the Terrans. You know they'll send help, Anteaus. You just have to hold out long enough for it to get here."

Anteaus shakes his head, his hair flying in wild counterpoint to his solemn tone, "Our ways have served us for as long as our people have lived."

"Yes, well, your people are about to _stop_ living if you don't do something, so forgive me for trying to do something about it."

"You are very young-"

Iohannes snorts. If he's _very young_, the universe is barley out of the womb.

"You are very young," Anteaus repeats, calm as the Replicator beetles and spiders begin to drop from the sky. The ground shakes when the heaviest fall. Great flocks of birds take flight across the forest as their treetop homes topple beneath them. Smoke can be seen in the distance. "Maybe one day you will learn that your way is not the only way."

"I'm not saying you need to _change_ anything. Go on living in the forest, see if I care. All I want you to do is try to _survive_. You can at least do that."

"We are who we are, young Icarus. That can never change."

"So what? You're just going to bow down and accept your extinction? What good does that do anyone?"

"What good would fighting do?" he counters. "We will die either way. Why not go with peace and dignity?"

"Screw peace and dignity! Fight back. Don't just lie down and let them kill you. Fight for your life. Fight for your mother's life. Fight for your children's. Fight for your homes and your friends and your forests. Fight to buy time for the Asgard and the Terrans, who are searching for a way to destroy these god-forsaken creatures once and for all!"

Anteaus laughs, as if Iohannes' rage somehow amuses him. "Icarus, I am an old and, despite your years, I have lived far longer than you. So listen to me when I say there are few things in life we can control. We cannot choose the manner of our births anymore than those whom we fall in love with, but, if we are lucky, we can choose how we die. The Nox choose to die as we lived: in peace."

"If you're not going to fight for your lives, you don't deserve them. You're all just cowards and fools, preaching high ideals but without the courage or conviction to _do_ anything with them."

"On the contrary: it takes a great deal of courage to let oneself be killed, far greater courage than it takes to kill."

"Don't do this!" Iohannes shouts, hearing the Replicators coming. "Fight back!" he screams. "Fight-!"

* * *

**20 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

"-back! Come on, you coward, fight back!"

"John?"

He blinks. The forests of Gaia disappear. Atlantis rises around him, her towers unmistakable even in the predawn light. The memory already begins to fade. He will never have to experience the extinction of the Nox again with such strength and ferocity. All he has to do is let himself forget the smell of the smoke and the scream of deceleration and the sound that flesh makes when torn apart by metal, and it will all be over. Then he can move on to the next horror.

Iohannes turns around and leans back against the balcony railing, trying to take some of the pressure off his broken tibiae and succeeding only in shifting it to his battered and bruised ribs. Once he would have been able to heal his injuries in half a heartbeat, but now it is all he can do to stand up straight without passing out from the pain. "_Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?"_

"I'm sorry, what was that?" someone asks, joining him on the balcony, while 'Lantis answers-

/_Even the Devil was once an angel_./

He snorts. "One day you're going to stop believing the best of me. I don't know what it's going to take, but you will." Maybe it will be the day he finally steps off this balcony instead of allowing this charade of life to go on.

/Never,/ 'Lantis promises.

It's only once Iohannes has finished making a rude gesture at the ceiling that he really notices he's no longer alone on the balcony. "Hey Carson," he says with forced cheer. "Sorry about that. I'm afraid 'Lantis and I are having a bit of a difference of opinion at the moment."

The doctor waves the comment off. "I'm more concerned about whether or not you've been eating."

"I've… eaten."

"It doesn't look like it, lad."

"I'm fine," he lies. He'll never be fine, but nobody needs to know that. Let them not know what's becoming of him until they have to put the bullet between his eyes. That would make things easiest for everyone.

"Doesn't look like that either. Come back with me to the IHC. You've been in the wind for four days. I need to make sure you've not torn any of your stiches or reinjured your ribs."

Iohannes doesn't have the energy to fight him. He doesn't have the energy to anything except just accept the memories as they come, washing over him like an endless wave of pain and suffering and hate that he can feel changing what little of himself still remains.

He lets Carson drag him off to the infirmary, tutting over his injuries like the mother hen Rodney has always claimed he is. "You shouldn't be walking, let alone running about the way you do. The pins in your legs are to help you heal, not to give you an excuse to go hurting yourself again."

"I'll be fine," he says flatly.

"No you won't, not if you keep going about it like this. You might as well have been held together with duct tape and paperclips they way you came back – it was like you'd forgotten all those physiology classes I gave you when you first Ascended. It's a miracle I was able to put you back together at all."

"I know. Rodney told me."

Carson sighs, pausing in his poking and prodding to say, "And yet, you've rebroken one of your ribs. I'm going to have to set it before it splinters and hits something important. Now," he holds up a syringe this here is an anaesthetic that will let me set your ribs without you moving about."

"That's really not necessary-" Iohannes begins, but the needle's already in his arm and a cool wave of something that is decidedly _not_ anaesthesia is washing through his veins, pull, pull, pulling him down into darkness, where the dreams wait for him.

* * *

"Well," Evan says tiredly, moving away from the windows that overlook the isolation room, where Icarus is strapped to a bed below, "I can definitely say this isn't how I'd anticipated spending my day."

Rodney doesn't even turn away from the glass. He just says, "Evan, please, do us all a favour and shut up for a moment."

He doesn't even waste a glare – Rodney's had his eyes glued to Icarus in the room below since the moment they entered the observation room – and stalks across the narrow space. There's a couch there, but Ronon's already sprawled across it, so Evan settles for perching atop one of the empty packing crates that line the remainder of the wall. "This doesn't just involve you, you know."

"Of course I know," Rodney snaps. "Our lives have never been our own for the entire time he and I have been together. Just give me a minute to deal with the fact that my husband's strapped to a gurney on suicide watch. _Then_ the _rector_ of Atlantis will help the new _imperator_ of Pegasus figure out what do about the fact that his predecessor has gone completely around the bend."

There are people on the stairs. "In Lord Icarus' defence," says one, "I don't believe that he's truly insane."

Evan jumps to his feet, less for the speaker than the woman behind her, twenty years of ingrained habit showing through despite almost a year since his illegal dishonourable discharge. He covers it up as best as he can by way of greeting, "Doctor Heightmeyer," as graciously as possible.

Heightmeyer, bless her, knows when to play along. "Lord 'Helianus," she counters with far greater poise, the corners of her lips turning upwards.

Ronon snorts at their ridiculousness.

Rodney ignores them all.

"I hope you don't mind my delay," she continues. "I thought it would be best if Doctor Beckett was involved in this discussion, as well as Colonel Carter."

That manages to grab Rodney's attention. "What?" he asks, spinning around. "No."

Evan sighs. "Pops-"

"No. I will not have this turned into another round of Lantean-Terran one-upmanship. This is John's _life_ we're talking about, not trading rights or staff appointments."

"I promise," Colonel Carter says, holding up both her hands in a universal _I come in peace_ gesture. It's a little strange seeing her in the command red of the Third Expedition, rather than the green or black uniforms the SGC prefers, "I'm only here to help John."

"I'm sorry, did you get a medical degree while you were away?"

"Pops, Colonel Carter is the new Head of the Expedition, remember. We may need her help to help Icarus."

Rodney snorts, turning back towards the glass and the isolation room below. "The only thing that can help John is taking Janus' time machine and going back long enough to keep Ganos from Ascending him in the first place."

"I have an idea about that, actually."

All of them save Rodney turn towards Doctor Heightmeyer. By this time, she's cleared out a space for herself on Ronon's couch, the dark cobalt skirts of her houppelande arrayed around her. Not for the first time, Evan thinks the city psychologist is the sort of woman who needs to be painted, and by a better artist than such as he.

"I do not believe that Icarus is truly insane," she says. "He's fully able to distinguish fantasy from reality. The problem, however, seems to be one of an _excess_ of reality."

Ronon, still sprawled across the remainder of the couch, looks intrigued. "What d'you mean?"

"I have spent much of the morning speaking with Lord Icarus. From what I am given to understand, during the period we thought him dead he entered the Higher Planes and eventually destroyed them. The resulting cataclysm rewound time, if you will, and created the universe in which we now live _poste facto_."

"And you believe him?"

"I have no reason not to," Heightmeyer answers honestly. "We know very little about Ascension and even less about those who voluntarily choose to Descend. Furthermore, he shows none of the usual affectations of psychosis."

"And yet," Rodney says with a level of brusqueness prodigious even for him, "you have him strapped to a bed and are pumping him full of SSRIs."

"There are many different kinds of mental illness, Doctor McKay. Icarus may not be psychotic, but he's definitely experienced a significant amount of trauma in the time he was gone – specifically, twenty-seven point five billion years worth of it."

"So what?" Evan asks, "Are you saying he has some sort of posttraumatic stress disorder?"

"It's far more complex than that."

"How so?" Carter asks.

"Isn't it obvious?" Rodney counters, turning away from the glass only to lean back against it, allowing himself to slide down to the floor in an ungraceful tangle of limbs and fabric. "John's not the type to sit back and watch others suffer if he can help it. So he went around to the places where the suffering was the worst and tried to stop it. And failed. Over and over and over again, for however long there have been sentient beings in the universe. Or who knows, maybe he tried to get the amoeba to get along too."

Heightmeyer is clearly surprised by this observation, as it takes her a moment to answer. "Yes. How did you know?"

Rodney snorts, but it's half-hearted at best. "I married the idiot, didn't I?"

"It's as Doctor McKay says," Heightmeyer continues, re-gathering steam, "For the last billion years or so, he's gone around trying to stop the biggest tragedies he could find – from the nuclear bombing that destroyed the original Loegria until the present day."

Realization comes all at once and has Evan halfway down the stairs before he can put words to his thoughts. Waving aside the nurse at the isolation room door, he hurries to Icarus' beside and is lucky enough to find him awake despite the heavy level of medication the doctors have him on.

"_Ei finem facere curabas, Argathelianus?_" he asks, oddly calm despite the padded straps holding him to the bed and the IV line running half a hundred prescriptions into his veins.

"No. I need to you answer a couple questions: What was the name of the man who set off the first nuclear bombs the day Loegria was destroyed?"

Icarus head falls back against the gurney. His eyes roll back into his skull just in time for the folks with medical degrees to arrive, but before they can add still more medications to his saline drip, he answers in surprisingly steady voice, "Aristaeus. His name was Aristaeus of Vigornia, a _tirbunus _in the army of the Cambrian Empire. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn't. I tried to stop the bombs, but I couldn't. Two billion people died instantly. The rest followed within a matter of weeks."

Evan closes his eyes. It is exactly like in his dream. But he must be certain. "And the doctor you spoke with at Auschwitz?"

"Eduard Wirths," he answers after a shorter delay. "He was the SS-_Standortarzt_ of the camp. He wouldn't stop his experiments. That's all I asked, but he wouldn't do it."

"I know," he says with what he hopes is reassurance.

"What was that about, Major?" Colonel Carter asks.

He's too tired to remind her that he's not a _major_ anymore, that her Air Force stole that from him while he was busy doing the right thing. Instead he simply says, "I think we may have a bigger problem than just Icarus: I've been dreaming of the things he's seen. God knows how many others have too."


	6. Pars Sex

_Vir_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

**21 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

"_Sylveste had to let his mind rest for a moment_," he reads, shifting the book to alleviate the cramping in his hand. He should really put the text down – his voice is growing hoarse and his eyes are straining – but there are hardly twenty pages left and he's invested in the ending by this point.

"_The immensity of it was dwindling now, leaving only the ringing aftertones, like the last echoes of the final chord of the greatest symphony ever played. In a few moments, he doubted he would remember much at all. There was simply insufficient room in his head for it all,_" Evan continues, noticing the light in Icarus' observation room beginning to change.

Is it sunrise already? Had he been here all night? It appears so. He'd only meant to grab a few things from his office before retiring for the night, regardless of what dreams may come. Then he'd found this book amid all the papers Icarus had left behind – a real book, made of paper and ink, rather than the digital files that were far more common in Atlantis – and thought that it might hold some special significance to his adoptive father. Evan had held the vain hope that reading aloud from it might help Icarus find his way out of the depths of his mind, where he'd retreated following the revelation that his memories are infecting the humans around him, and back into the land of the living.

With twenty pages to go, Evan's hope seems to have been extremely misplaced, but ever the optimist, he continues to read. "_And, strangely, he did not feel the slightest sorrow at its passing. For those few moments, it had been wonderful to taste that transhuman knowledge, but it was simply too much for one man to know. It was better to live; better to carry a memory of a memory, than to suffer the vast burden of knowing._"

Somebody snorts. It takes Evan a moment to connect it with _Icarus_, who somehow manages to seem utterly at ease and _completely awake_ despite still being strapped to his hospital bed on nominal suicide watch.

"How long have you been awake?" he asks.

"Since about chapter two?" Icarus manages to shrug despite the band across his shoulder and the second restraining his upper torso. "I can see why Rory likes it when you read to her. You really get into it."

Evan snaps the book shut, feeling rather foolish. "You could have said something."

"It was distracting – something to focus on other than all of the various ways sentient beings have discovered to inflict suffering on each other." Icarus goes silent, still, eyes focused into the ill-lit distance on something that only he can see. His jaw clenches, his hands curl into fists, but otherwise he gives no sign of the horrors he must be experiencing; the drugs Heightmeyer prescribed have done that at least.

It takes Icarus several moments to come back to himself after the memory passes – or, maybe, it simply takes him that time to reach the decision to pretend that this memory, like all those that must have come and gone over the last five hundred pages, never happened. He just waves his hand as best as the padded cuffs will allow and says, "Don't mind me. Go on."

Evan, for lack of a better option, resettles and goes to do just that.

"Actually," he interrupts before Evan's even turned to the right page, "do you mind getting me something to write with first? And maybe un-cuffing my hands – or just one, maybe?" He wiggles the fingers on one of his hands experimentally, as if to test circulation. "It's just, I'd like to write some of this down."

Evan thinks the suicide watch is pointless – if Icarus wanted to kill himself, he would have done so before now – and the cuffs even more so, so he releases both of Icarus' hands before looking around the room for something he could write with. He finds a stack of printer paper inexplicably in one of the cabinets, steals the pen from the clipboard at the foot of the bed, and presents them both to the Ancient, who looks mildly amused at the primitive level of technology but accepts them both readily.

Once the bed is tilted forward enough that Icarus can write despite the straps across his shoulders, chest, and thighs, Evan reopens the book and begins to read: "_It was better to live; better to carry a memory of a memory, than to suffer the vast burden of knowing. He was not meant to think like a god…_"

* * *

"_She spread arms wide, as if she had wings; as if she could fly. The red ground – fluctuating, shimmering as ever – dropped smoothly away_," he finishes, automatically glancing at the ceiling to see what his audience might have thought of it.

Atlantis' feelings on science fiction, however, tend much more towards abstracted tolerance than Rory's exuberant voracity, as illustrated by her rather perfunctory, /That was lovely_, _Argathelianus. Thank you./

Evan doesn't mind. He understands that, however much the city likes him, it had been _Aurora_ who had chosen him. He would always belong a little bit more to the _linter_ than he would to Atlantis, for all it was she who had finished his conversion process, such as it was. 'Lantis is John's in a way she has never been anyone else's. 'Lantis will always be John's. And if she doesn't happen to share John's fascination with Terran science fiction, well, that's just one more mystery in a galaxy full of them.

He goes to ask Icarus if the book was sufficiently distracting, but sees that his hospital bed is already covered with papers so he asks instead, "What are you writing?"

"Things you'll need to know. Things I need to remember. The future," Icarus answers obliquely, peeling a newly finished page off the top of the stack of printer paper and thrusting it at Evan.

He squints at the sheet. It is covered top to bottom, front and back, in soldier-straight columns of Ancient letters. Some phrases are much bigger than others – towards the centre of what he assumes is the front is the Ancient word for _Destiny_ written in letters an inch tall, although most of the rest of the page reads as complete gibberish at first glance. "You couldn't have written it in English?"

Icarus doesn't answer, so he picks up a few more. A great number of them seem to be equations Evan couldn't begin to make sense of even if they hadn't been written in base eight, with obscure titles like _the course of chance and destiny _and _planning alone is insufficient. _No few are written entirely in blocks of texts like the first, all with even more impossibly bizarre titles, of which the prize goes to one that has the words _trace the river backwards to the source of the stream and there is always one who is two who is none_ curling outwards from the centre in a perfect Golden Spiral.

There is one written in English, however, that he finds after it falls to the floor. On it are six words: FREEDOM, CHANCE, DISCOVERY, DESTINY, INTEGRITY, and AUDACITY. The last two are crossed out, the first with the words _supernova, NGC 5236 _written beneath, the second with the words _black hole, NGC 4945_ above it in drifting letters. Arrows point out from the rest – the arrow from FREEDOM towards the stylized eye symbol that is one of the only things they know about the Furlings, DISCOVERY to the _odala_ rune of the Asgard, CHANCE to a giant question mark, and DESTINY to a series of nine glyphs that Lorne does not recognize but immediately knows can only be one thing, though how exactly he knows this he cannot later say.

With a glance back at Icarus, who is writing too furiously to pay him any heed, he opens a comm line. "Doctor McKay? Colonel Carter? What do you guys know about nine chevron Gate addresses?"

* * *

"This isn't a Gate address," Rodney scoffs, taking one look at the paper before passing it off to Colonel Carter in favour of examining the other documents that litter Icarus' bed. "It's sort of numerical code or cypher."

"Why do you say that?" Carter asks with genuine curiosity.

"Well, for one thing it doesn't _look_ like any symbol in any Stargate system that we know of."

"Exactly – that we _know_ of."

"For another," Rodney says, running roughshod over her protestation, "even if it _did_ belong to a network of Stargates that we don't know anything about, every symbol we _have_ come across has some basis in the constellation of the world on which it was originally developed. The ones in the Milky Way use the constellations as seen on Earth sixty-five million years ago-"

"Sixty-four point four, actually," Icarus corrects, shoving a sheaf of papers at his husband, upsetting the stack already in his hand.

Unlike before, Rodney takes this interruption magnanimously, continuing with the correction, "Based on the constellations on Earth sixty-four point four billion years ago. The symbols for Pegasus are what Lantea's constellations looked like ten thousand…." He glances towards Icarus.

"Ten thousand, three hundred forty-five years."

"Thank you. They are what Lantea's constellations were ten thousand, three hundred forty-five years ago. But these," Rodney gestures with the roll of papers Icarus had handed him, "are nothing but dots, dashes, and squiggly lines. That screams _code_ to me, not _constellation_."

"Maybe it's both."

"Both? Why would it be both?"

"Why not? We know the Ancients were on the run from the Ori for a long time." She pauses deliberately, glancing towards Icarus. When he fails to offer the exact timeframe, Carter continues, "Maybe it was an extra way of keeping their Gate addresses safe. There's nothing anywhere that says Gate symbols _have_ to be based on constellations."

"But why nine symbols then?"

"Well, we never have figured out what the ninth chevron does."

"Who says it has to do anything?" Evan asks, a little tired of being forgotten in this conversation. "As much as we like to pretend otherwise, not everything the Ancients did had a purpose, particularly the farther back in history you go. There have to be at least a dozen better, more efficient ways to build a flying city and yet they chose to go with spires and stained glass windows. That's aesthetics, not functionality." He glances quickly at the ceiling. "Sorry, 'Lantis."

Atlantis flickers the lights in a way he takes to mean _no offense taken_.

Colonel Carter looks at them both amusedly. "Why don't you just ask the city what it means then?"

Evan, seeing no reason why not, "What do you say, 'Lantis? Know anything about these symbols?"

/They are indeed symbols for the _astrae portae_,/ she offers, /but we do not know what their destination is. Only the _sator_ that they came from would know that./

Rodney glances at the ceiling as if betrayed. "What the hell is a _sator_?"

"Seed ships," Icarus answers, surprising them all, "sent out during the Second Wave to seed humanoid life throughout the galaxies. If the _Haeretici_ ever tried to find us, we hoped to disguise our trail by placing Descendants on every planet capable of supporting life within a hundred galaxies. There were six originally. Only two remain." He drops his pen, rolls up the last few pages he's written, and passes them to Rodney. "You'll need these."

Rodney adds them to his earlier pile. "What _are_ all these?"

"Things you'll need," Icarus shrugs. "Equations. Histories. Formulas. A formal declaration of abdication. My will. A Do Not Resuscitate order."

Evan had been watching Rodney shuffle through the papers in his hand – all appeared to be in Ancient, of course, but then again Rodney was rather more practiced at reading Ancient than Evan was – but now his eyes snap towards Icarus-

Icarus, who's still strapped to his hospital bed everywhere save his hands, and even they are limited in motion by the leather bands across his shoulder and chest. The ballpoint pen Evan had given him now lies somewhere around his knees, capped and far out of reach. There are a few sheets of paper still on his lap, but most have migrated into Rodney's arms or onto the floor. His right arm is raised, trying to scratch at a spot underneath the left side of the strap across his chest, and there is absolutely nothing he could use to harm himself within reach.

Until his right hand starts to glow. A terrible wail rises from his heart rate monitor.

Suddenly, doctors are streaming through the door. Someone is saying, "He's in V-fib," and another answering, "Asystole," and other words are being passed that he neither catches nor understands.

"What happened?" Doctor Beckett asks between a request for paddles and the order for them to be charged to two hundred. "I thought you were watching him!"

"We were!" Rodney insists, moving to the side just enough to be out of the doctors' way but still close enough to be a bother. He manages to look more resigned than worried, as if he'd expected Icarus to try something to try something like this sooner or later. "He must have stopped his heart, like he did with Captain Cadman."

It's impossible to tell if Beckett's gone completely still or if his muscles have somehow seized up along with Icarus' as they try to shock his heart into beating. "_What_?

"No change," says one of the nurses.

"Charge to two twenty," he orders, one eye still on Rodney. "What do you mean _like he did with Laura_?"

"She begged him to help her die after Michael fed on her. I'll explain later, _just save him now_."

Beckett, to his credit, attempts to do just that, looking shaken.

"What about the DNR?" Evan hears himself asking, stupidly. He hadn't thought Icarus – his adoptive father, the man he would have followed into the heart of a star once upon a time and for whom he'd broken every covenant he'd ever made – would honestly try to kill himself. Perhaps he was overly fond of flirting with death, yes, and had yet to meet a suicide mission he didn't like, but that didn't mean Icarus actually _wanted_ to die – or so he'd have thought. But if he truly wants to die, that's his choice to make. They should respect that rather than force him to live with the impossible burden of knowledge his time as an Ascended being has left him with.

"Need I remind you, _Argathelianus_," Rodney says sharply, "that your dear old dad was _on suicide watch_ when he signed it? It doesn't count. I'm his husband; I say shock away."

The doctors do once, twice more, until normal sinus rhythm has been restored. Only then does Rodney allow the nurses – as well as himself and Colonel Carter – to be shepherded out of the room, to answer questions and be offered surprisingly decent cups of coffee while they wait for answers

Six hours later when Icarus finally wakes up, they are the first ones through the door.

* * *

The first thing Iohannes notices is the pain. Every inch of him aches, from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair, and he doesn't think he'll ever _not hurt_ again.

The second thing he notices is the noise. Atlantis has never been quiet, not even when she'd been empty, but this is more than just the quiet, sleepy song of a slumbering city; it is voices. People, speaking in a language he doesn't know and can't understand.

"What the hell was _that_ about?" one of them demands, all but quivering with barely contained energy, his hands moving in a way that, even in silence, seem to ask _who_ and _what_ and _why why why_. "Do you even _know_ what you put me through every time you do something like this, John? Do you? At this rate _I_'ll be the one whose heart finally gives out from the stress of it all. I did _not_ marry you to be sent into an early grave."

Iohannes closes his eyes, allowing the words to wash over him until the tide of speech ends.

The man who'd spoken continues to watch him worriedly, his hands wringing inside the sleeves of his vaguely Tirianan _pulviale_. Another man, with Father's colouring in military dress, stands at the foot of the bed, weary but concerned. Between them is a longhaired blonde woman in clothing the likes of which he has never seen, with slashes of dark carmine on her deep grey uniform. She too is concerned, but there's a hardness to the set of her jaw.

"_Qui estis?_" he asks with deliberate slowness. "_Quam Atlante adestis_?"


End file.
